The Academic Profession in Transition

3 THE ACADEMIC PROFESSION IN TRANSITION* James L. Bess Teachers College Columbia University In the aftermath, of the retrenchment of the early '70's, the academic community today continues to experience economic and psychological stress. Financial pressures still threaten the continuity of its efforts, and the portent of increasingly strong external controls augurs poorly for the preservation of traditional professional autonomy. Although the discomfort is unpleasant, some benefits of the condition have arisen. Through forced introspection, the profession can now be seen with more precision. ^hat has become especially clear is the pressing need of academia not only to improve its performance with respect to its outside publics but simultaneously to create new kinds of organizational structures more conducive to faculty productivity and satisfaction. The latter is critical to the former. The theme of this paper and of the research on which it is based is as follows: How can the changing and insistent demands of the society for academic services from our insti­ tutions be efficiently met through the satisfaction of growth and development needs of persons working in the institution? While present attempts at "faculty development"-- instruc­ tional, professional, personal— are helpful, they are only partial solutions, addressing the needs of relatively few persons among the faculty. The approach outlined below argues for a more fundamental attack on the problem through institu­ tion-wide reorganization. Despite research showing that faculty are relatively satisfied with their careers and lifestyles, it is most likely that many, if not a majority, suffer from role strain and role overload (Siegel, 1973; Morgan, 1971; Loether, 1974). Faculty are required to perform too many tasks at the same time, a large number of which they do not like and/or are relatively incompetent to do. It is well known that faculty are illtrained to perform in many of their role components. They are trained in research only and rarely receive training as teach­ ing assistants. The result is that the institution as well as * Revised paper presented at the annual meeting of the Asso­ ciation for the Study of Higher Education, March 20, 1977, Chicago, Illinois. The research for this paper was supported by a grant from the Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education, Department of Health, Education and Welfare. 4 individuals who work in it suffer. Unmotivated faculty perform less well than motivated ones, particularly in tasks requiring qualitative judgments (like those in academia). The stress experienced goes largely unreported due to the necessity for faculty in questionnaire responses to maintain their sense of having made a correct career decision. With so few opportunit­ i e s to move out of academia, faculty are constrained to believe that their interests are best served by staying within it. Hence, the goals of the institution are not efficiently and effectively accomplished, nor are. faculty personally fulf­ illed. The fault lies largely in the ways in which colleges and universities are structured organizationally. Through the process of "Hole accumulation" (Sieber, 1974; Lazarfeld and Etzioni, n.d.) the job of the faculty member has had a multi­ plicity of tasks added to it: counseling, consulting, com­ mitteeing, curriculum planning, r e s e a r c h i n g , writing, evaluating, editing, etc. Indeed, this research shows that at least 320 discrete faculty tasks can be identified. Still, the belief persists that a departmental structure, which is based on disciplines of knowledge best serves the multiple missions of the institution. Actually, it probably serves best the relatively small percentage of faculty who are research - oriented and want to be engaged predominantly in research careers. Given the multidisciplinary character of most social problems today, there is some doubt that the present organization serves even that group well. There have been a number of attempts to deal with the problem of departmentalization in institutions of higher educa­ tion. Most noteworthy is the cluster college system which, in most cases, divides faculty responsibility into teaching and research (Gaff, 1970). Under this plan, faculty contract to spend roughly half of their time in an undergraduate col­ lege and half of their time in operations connected with their disciplinary departmental base. Evaluations of performance are conducted by both the college...